Toshiba Unveils Next Gen Self-Encrypting HDDs

New HDDs have special security features

Toshiba has been part of the storage industry for a long time and the company has its storage drives inside all sorts of notebooks and computers that are on the market today. When it comes to protecting the data of business user's encryption is the way to go. One lost notebook with unencrypted data can be catastrophic for a company.

Toshiba has announced its latest HDD family that is the next generation of self-encrypting HDDs. The HDDs are designed to automatically invalidate protected data when they are connected to an unknown host. That means if someone strips the HDD out of a computer and tries to access the data on another machine the data will be made inaccessible so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands.

The new HDDs are in the MKxx61GSYG series and there are several other specific models in the range. The HDDs come in 640GB, 500GB, 320GB, 250GB, as well as 160GB versions. The larger capacity HDDs use two platters and the lower capacity versions use single platters. The performance of the HDDS is the same no matter the capacity.

Scott Wright, product manager, Toshiba Storage Device Division, notes, “Digital systems vendors recognize the need to help their customers protect sensitive data from leakage or theft. Toshiba’s security technologies provide designers of copiers, printers, PCs, and other systems with new capabilities to help address these important security concerns.”

The seek time is 12ms and they all use the SATA interface at 3Gbps. The line of HDDs spin at 7200 rpm and all have the same 16MB buffer. The new SED data encryption tech in the new drives is the first in the industry to allow the data on the HDD to be rendered inaccessible by multiple data ranges, enabling targeted data in the drive to be rendered indecipherable by command, on power cycle, or on host authentication error. The HDDs will enter mass production in Q2.